


watch this space, i think maybe it's you-shaped

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C-AU, Everybody Lives, Gen, Moving On, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Game AU, getting better, some people make a background appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8855758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Cronus falls out a window.
Much to her own surprise, Damara jumps after him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _‒ Jade?_   
>  _‒ Alexander?_   
>  _‒ Do you remember that day you fell outta my window?_   
>  _‒ I sure do ‒ you came jumping out after me._   
>  _‒ Well, you fell on the concrete, nearly broke your ass, and you were bleeding all over the place, and I rushed you out to the hospital, you remember that?_   
>  _‒ Yes, I do._   
>  _‒ Well, there's something I never told you about that night._   
>  _‒ What didn't you tell me?_   
>  _‒ Well, while you were sitting in the back seat smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deeply in love with you, and I never told you 'til just now!_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

This is a stupid party, you don't even know why you're here. Even if in the aftermath of the Game, of winning, of a resurrection that none of you had expected to see as you were thrown through a gaping hole in reality, vomited forth, Rufioh and Horuss had parted ways romantically just as Rufioh had been telling you for thousands of sweeps that he was going to, and yet you remain broken. Even with the clean slate of a new start, there are some things that remain smudged and torn and one of them is you, Damara Megido. You're all sharp edges, and you can't bear to see how they compare to the soft dullness of your sessionmates. How many centuries of sweeps dead and they learned nothing? Maybe it's true, maybe only the living learn. Maybe now they'll start.

You are not planning on holding your newly restored breath.

Your fingers hold loosely onto a can of soporific, a cigarette of something more loosening than tobacco dangling from your other hand. You've had a few puffs, you walked around and shared with Porrim, her mouth leaving jade green lipstick on the butt, covering your rust-red. You don't mind Porrim. You never have. She respects you, respects your choices even if she doesn't understand them. You like the way she takes no shit, even when she seems calm. You suppose that having such a powerful strifekind is a very reassuring back up to any words she might care to utter. Perhaps your needlekind is not quite as threatening, but you've always found them effective. Too effective.

You have memories that you prefer not to revisit, if you can. 

Maybe that's cowardly of you, but you don't want to keep treading over the same old ground. In the bubbles, that had been all any of you had done. You'd never changed. You'd never altered. Even when the new players had swarmed the bubbles, you had all just stayed _exactly the same_.

With an effort, you turn your mind away from that and continue to hover by the table so you can continue to stuff your face. Food, free food - that you didn't have to cook. All good things, and it's not even bad. You and all your companions came from the void with nothing; you're lucky that the winners have been so kind. It's not a terrible world. The people are friendly, carapacians, humans and trolls all, they think you are all some kind of accompanying spirits to the 'gods'. But _you_ remain all edges to your core and you don't know how to talk to someone who hasn't been through the game, and nothing else of East Beforus remains besides you - Rufioh doesn't fucking count. And when you die, there won't be anything. ( _Can_ you die now? Are you like those human children? You're not sure, you don't want to test it. Not yet.) It is a remarkably homogeneous culture that they've spawned here, despite the fact that there are three different species coexisting.

You breathe out smoke and exchange pleasantries with the tealblooded skater as she grabs a plateful for her and her matesprit. There was always something off about how Mituna came to be the way he was, and a lot of things had become clear as the bubbles broke up and Lord English approached - you had been somewhat friendly with the mime, but at the same time, you're glad he isn't here. Hadn't quite made it through. Or maybe it was just that no one really wanted to fetch him? Couldn't keep down the clown, that was what everyone always said, so you're sure he'll resurface at just the wrong time. 

When no one is ready for him, or his master. 

"うぜんだよ," you snap as a cooler body brushes up against yours, elbowing Cronus in the ribs. In the gills, from the way he wheezes and sidles away with a hurt look. Now, speaking of someone who'd never grown... It's so frustrating to you sometimes, to watch him. You want to shake him out of his complacency, get him to understand that desperation is not the best sort of cologne to wear and that rejection doesn't mean some sort of personal failure or utter annihilation of yourself as a person, you don't have to _keep trying_. Sometimes the wisest thing to do is give up.

Ha. Some kind of advice for _you_ to give. 

"C'mon, babe, damn, it was an accident," he whines, and those earfins flutter, looking as sulky as a culled grub. 

"Ugly look," you tell him despite how a tiny corner of you thinks that it's cute how they move and he puffs up, hand slicking back his hair and other stuck into the pocket of his jacket. Stupid cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, some kind of statement you could give less of a shit about. Smoke it, or don't, but if you weren't going to, take it the fuck out of your mouth. Ridiculous preening asshole. Too worried about what shit looked like to really understand that looks weren't everything. You put your own to your mouth and grin nastily around it, sucking the smoke down into your lungs. "Look out for Heir of Breath - make wind change, stick ugly face that way. 残念だ."

"Please don't say you told me to suck my own dick or something, I hate it when you spout that shit off."

You smile at him, and let a hint of derangement creep in at the sides. He looks appropriately cowed, and somehow...that bothers you. You meant to come to this party and try to get along, maybe let some of your edges smooth away under the socialisation. Not scare people. Not even Cronus. Reaching out, you pap him on the cheek with your fingertips. He gapes at you, and you think he could stand to be nonplussed and not quite as concerned about his image more often. It's not what you'd call a bad look on him. "No. Because you are troll, do not have dick like real human. Maybe try buy one? Can stick down pants. Or up nook." You smile again, and then move on, leaving him gaping behind you.

The humankin thing is honestly not the strangest hobby members of your group had, although you're amused that it's outlasted even contact with actual humans. Everyone has their thing. Although if he calls you babe _one more time_... you can't answer for your actions. Idiot. He's _such_ a stunted fool. But he has something like potential, you think. In the hands of the right troll. If he maybe stopped doing some things, and some other things were encouraged to flower, to grow...

You pause in your thinking and feel horrified to the core of yourself. At the same time your pusher skips something like a beat, while you watch him try and flirt with Porrim to the tune of her disgusted curl of a beautifully painted lip showing a good inch of fang before she pushes him off. Flashes light at him in a dismissive threat display and he just turns on the charm in a redirected spotlight of attention like a ricocheting pinball to try it on with Rufioh this time. Really? _Really?_ Maybe Rufioh likes higherblooded nook, but he doesn't want to deal with the neuroses that come with it, _that_ should have been more than obvious from what had happened with Horuss. You want to warn him off, tell him to look somewhere, anywhere else.

And it's not because you still have a lingering something of a feeling deep in the crevices of your vascular pump for Rufioh either.

Somehow you can't stop watching as Cronus moves through the people at the party, facing rejection at every move. Every moment. Why does he even come here? Why does he talk to any of you any more? It's not like what it was in the dreambubbles, where there was only you, you and then more and more copies of the other dead (they had all been so young). There's not a single welcoming word. No one really wants to see him. The only reason Kankri tolerates him even a little is that Cronus is an audience that'll listen, because at least it means someone is acknowledging the fact that he exists by having one half of a conversation with him. You watch Kankri's mouth, opening and closing, and you watch the earfins dip. They're so expressive, you haven't noticed that before. In all honesty (you are honest as often as you can because the truth is cruel), you haven't cared. You have noticed very little for sweeps. Very little, about anyone, and Cronus had been one of your last priorities. You sip from your drink and tear your eyes away. He's not your business.

You don't care. 

Why would you care? You have exactly zero reason to care, a big asslicking blank of a reason. Especially about epic king of douche, Cronus Ampora. But. You suppose you know what it's like, to be the person that nobody wants to be around. And people will talk to you, even now, even after what you did. Even Rufioh talks to you (he also asks you for romantic advice, and wasn't that just one of the hardest conversations you'd ever had when he opened it up the first time in the dreambubbles) (After the fifth or tenth or hundredth time, it had become merely extremely tiring), and you pretty much killed him. You had been the reason he'd spent at least, what, half a sweep as a head on the top of a metal hoofbeast (what was _wrong_ with Horuss). He did cheat on you first, but death has given you some distance on the matter. Or maybe just a big wallowing void of apathy where you think you're meant to have feelings.

You are pretty sure that at some point, you're going to have to deal with that. But not tonight. 

You have no idea why, when Mituna shoves Cronus too hard and in the wrong direction in reaction to an ugly piece of black flirtation that the psionic has never reciprocated despite the thousands of sweeps he's been trying it on, your reaction is that you're already moving as the back of the sea troll's knees hit the sill of the open window and his arms windmill, that stupid fucking unlit, damp cigarette finally falling from his mouth as it drops open in shock. He disappears and you dive. Your fingers touch the edge of his shirt and you feel something drag at your foot; you kick back blindly and keep falling. You never had full control over your aspect since you never went godtier; but things seem to move in stuttering starts, in quick bursts followed by long pauses of motionless. You are as always, useless to stop the spiral of events. Things happen, and they just keep happening and you can't do anything to stop them. Not a single one, you're locked into causality and progression. You're just Time's bitch, on your knees and sucking that clockwork-toothed bulge down your throat while you pretend you're not tearing up and gagging as it forces its way down to your lungs.

You stretch, you can't reach.

Both of you fall.

He hits the ground before you do.

Hits hard.

You hear something break inside him; you know what that sounds like. It's not really a sound you forget. The last time you'd heard it, you'd caused it. The breathing from him takes on a wet sound, and you twist to land next to him on your feet instead of on top of him. This isn't that kind of thing. Subconsciously, you ask yourself what kind of thing it is, but you ignore that small voice. You've gotten a lot better at ignoring all kinds of voices, from your own inner manifestation of something like a conscience to the voices of the dead and departed. 

"H-hey, Megido," he wheezes, and you get on your knees next to him. His face has gone ashen under his flecks of carapace and tiny lights are blooming under his skin in violet flickers. The earfins are still and flitted back. His eyes are wide and shocky, and you hold your hands above his shirt as you try to think about what to do. Maybe tonight is the night you find out if any of you can die, but he is a seadweller. They're tough. The white shirt looks wet and stained in the light that's coming from the window, you glance upwards as you hear someone yell your name and there's heads there, leaning out. One of the shapes leaps from light into dark and then wings spring out; Rufioh. "Nice panties." He tries to smile and you hiss at him, then flick him in the middle of his forehead with your finger. "Ow!"

"馬鹿. Open stupid mouth." You still have your joint, which is the most surprising thing, and you huff the ember of it into flame, pull the smoke into your throat, then lean down and breath it into him, mouth sealed over his. He sucks it in surprise, and you do it again, watching his pupils dilate as he breaths in your breath. There, better. "Besides, fishface, if had seen shit, you would know they are not." He looks confused and kind of stoned, and that's the way you need him to be because you're going to have to move him to get him to the healing places. Especially now they're short that bespectacled witch, it's going to take longer for him to heal as well, no need to make things worse with more pain. You snort, amused, then lean down to give him yet another smoke filled breath. His mouth is cool, and he doesn't try even once to press his tongue into your mouth. All your kisses between the two of you are chaste as fuck, for as open mouthed as they are. "I don't wear stupid things."

And oh, look at that blush bloom. It's amazing, it almost covers those little freckles of bioluminescence. Somehow you think that Cronus is not as much of a bad ass as he thinks, or wants anyone else to think and you're about ready to wager that his actual amount of experience over a pail is exactly - zip. Zero. Nothing. He's a shell of a troll, but you're not so sure now that there really is nothing inside. You can remember when he was young, and all he wanted to do was talk about wizards. How his eyes had lit up when he talked about magic. You wonder how much of that wriggler there is still left alive. Whether millennia of monotony and trauma had wiped him out, squashed him under foot and rolled him out to this new shape with no hope of healing. You wonder.

Can he be mended?

Can you?

After all, this is a new world.

Maybe things can be better. Maybe. It's all new possibilities up in this bitch now, and you look up as Rufioh lands next to you in a huff of displaced dirt. "Rufioh.  私が彼を運ぶのを手伝って. Scuttlebuggy where?" For once, you're disinterested as his brown and red wings clap closed, folding against his muscled back. It's...slightly amazing to you that you don't care about how the light catches the angle of his jaw, the way his hair is tousled just so. You honestly _don't care_. It is freeing, the way you imagine his Aspect is meant to be when all he's done before is tie you down to the past.

"Just over here, doll...what is even up with this. Since when did you give a shit about Cronus? I mean, you just threw yourself out the window like he meant something to you...that's new..."

"地獄へいけ, just _help_ me,  ばかやろう."

Cronus hangs like limp clothes between the two of you and you lift him under the arms as Rufioh lifts him from the knees. It's not an easy weight. He's cool to touch, cooler than you think he should be. The seadweller warbles, crying out in pain but you steel yourself to carry him to the skittercrawler waiting for you. Pile him into the backseat and climb in with him, letting someone else take the wheel. Not Rufioh. Meenah? You. You suppose you will let her help, even if her presence so close makes you want to bare your teeth and keep her from the _both_ of you. Cronus' head is in your lap, crooked horns jabbing you uncomfortably in the belly before he struggles to sit up as the biotechnic engine clicks to life. You really don't want to let him, but the backseat of a skuttlebuggy is the _last_ place you want to try and restrain a hurt and freaking out seatroll. You can think of worse, but not many.

He leans against your shoulder and...and _he takes out another fucking cigarette_ , to replace the one he lost as Mituna shoved him through the window. You are inches from slapping it out of his hands as they shake, as he holds it out to you with this look on his face that makes you want to either kick him in the globes or give him anything he wants. It's a tough choice to make, but you suppose he's been hurt enough for one evening. "Give us a light, Megido, fuck." You purse your lips, and reach down the front of your shirt to pull your lighter from between your heftsacks. He doesn't make a joke or a comment at all, just sucks down greedily as you light the cigarette for him; he must be hurt if he didn't go for a cheap shot like that. Your other arm is around his shoulders as he slumps against you, breathing staticky and smoke leaking from the gills in his throat and the corners of his mouth. You brush the curl of his pompadour out of his eyes and let the chill weight of him bear you down, keep you centred. You listen to him breathe, exhale, inhale, the little snaps of his gills as they open and close.

You've never been this close to him before. And when you tried to stab Meenah through the gills with your hair sticks, you weren't really thinking about what she sounded like when she breathed. Just how much you wanted her _dead_.

"Lost boy had a point, princess...why t'fuck did you jump after me?" 

You're not exactly sure yourself, but you had to and you did. You've always gone with your gut. Sometimes it's steered you wrong, or maybe a little too far but you go far more with what your instincts and your cardiopusher tell you than your mind. Always have.

"Idiot face." You pat his cheek and ignore Meenah's amused glance in the rear view mirror. This is _not any of her business_. You wish almost anyone else would have driven you. Porrim, maybe. Even Kankri, as hideous as that thought is. No, you suppose both of you could do without the lecture. Yak, yak, yak, yak. Stupid useless noise; you can imagine it now. Sometimes you wish the jadeblood would be a little less protective. Maybe Kankri would be less insufferable, if he got a good smack in the face every so often when he ran his stupid big mouth, lips flapping and no sense coming out. Just an avalanche of noise, with no meaning, no compassion, and no true thought behind it. Just jargon and buzzwords meant to wound and belittle, even if he would swear otherwise. Fuck. Why are you even thinking about Kankri right now? Oh yes, distracting yourself from thinking about how Cronus' angular body with its broad shoulders fits comfortably under your arm. "Talk later, shut stupid mouth now. Shh.  愚かなチャタボックス."

There's the scent of blood, a strong smell of salt. He listens to you and shuts the hell up; you steal his cigarette for your own brief inhale as he complains about 'your fuckin' thievin', Megido, fuck' before handing it back. You just needed something to calm your nerves, and you think you dropped your joint on the pavement when you'd picked him up to carry him. You don't know what this is.You don't even know if he feels anything for you, or if he'll just grab at the hope of a quadrant. Any quadrant. But still. It could be worth a shot.

Cronus is an idiot, and you know that. If you want to have any chance of nailing him into your pale quadrant, you are going to have to be...ostentatious.

"You're fucking _insane_ ," he says, and a laugh bubbles up from his throat. It's the most honest laugh you've heard from him since before you all died. You want to hear him laugh like that again, more often. You want it to be because of _you_. You put your fingers against his mouth and he squints at you, one pupil _definitely_ larger than the other in the light of the moon. Whoops. Maybe you should have called an emergency mediculler. That is not a good sign. "I like it."

"うるさい."

"Alriiiight, I'll cool it. What are you, my lusus?"

" _うるさい._ "

You purse your lips and give him a forbidding glare, and this time he quiets down, probably more because he's tired and feels like warmed over lusus shit than because of anything you've said. Meenah, for once in her whole fucking life and death, has decided to keep her mouth shut and her opinions to herself. It's a Gristmas miracle. You make a note to offer some sake to the spirits, maybe make your own shrine that isn't dedicated to those alien children and think hard about a little thank you prayer.

His head sways as the skuttlebuggy moves, and you tug him a little more close to your body to support him. You try to seem as though you're not staring at his face as he closes his eyes, and you wonder. This is probably a bad idea, what you're thinking of but it's such a novelty to feel anything than tired, that you're going to grip it with both hands. 

At least you know he's not going to be offended at your off-colour jokes.

You wonder if he maybe has any new ones, from all the human trawling he does. That'd be fun. You can gross out even _more_ people that way. Possibly even in tandem. Maybe it will go nowhere, and that will be alright too. You've learned a lot about letting go, since you died. Maybe for once, you'll be able to take some of your own advice...but still. You think maybe there's a chance, and what was the point of dying if you didn't get to _live_ afterwards?

Gods, he's an idiot.

You're an even worse idiot.

Maybe that's why, it just might work.


End file.
